Atmos Settings

SkillMonitoring & ops

Atmos global settings: settings, logs, errors, env, docs, metadata, version requirements, terminal behavior, telemetry, experimental flags, and non-subsystem atmos.yaml options

Available today. Use it from your connected AI after setup.

Connect ahel once, and every AI you use reads what you have installed.

Then ask your AI: use the Atmos Settings skill

What this skill tells your AI

The instructions your AI receives, as published by cloudposse/atmos in agent-skills/skills/atmos-settings/SKILL.md and read by ahel’s review.

Use this skill for global atmos.yaml options that are not owned by a narrower subsystem skill.

Owned Sections

SectionUse for
settingsGlobal CLI behavior, terminal behavior, telemetry, experimental options
logsLog level, log file path, debug output behavior
errorsError output formatting and error reporting options
envEnvironment variables applied to Atmos operations
docsDocumentation generation defaults
metadataProject-level metadata such as name, tags, and version
versionMinimum or maximum Atmos version constraints

If a setting belongs to a subsystem such as templates, validation, auth, CI, or toolchain, load that subsystem skill instead.

Common Pattern

settings:
  terminal:
    pager: false
    syntax_highlighting:
      enabled: true
  telemetry:
    enabled: false

logs:
  level: Info

env:
  AWS_REGION: us-east-1

metadata:
  name: platform-infrastructure

Terminal Appearance and Color

settings.terminal controls Atmos's terminal output appearance (color, theme, width, unicode, syntax highlighting, pager). Fields (from pkg/schema/schema.go Terminal struct):

settings:
  terminal:
    color: true               # Explicitly force color on (overrides TTY auto-detection)
    no_color: false           # Deprecated: use the --no-color flag or ATMOS_NO_COLOR/NO_COLOR/CLICOLOR env vars instead
    force_color: false        # ENV-only (ATMOS_FORCE_COLOR) -- not settable from this config field
    theme: dracula             # Theme name; see `atmos theme list` for available names
    max_width: 120
    unicode: true
    syntax_highlighting:
      enabled: true
    pager: false               # false/true/off/on/"less"/a specific pager command

Precedence: no_color (config) is deprecated in favor of the --no-color flag/env vars below. IsColorEnabled logic: no_color forces color off; else explicit color: true forces it on; otherwise Atmos falls back to TTY auto-detection.

Flags and Environment Variables

FlagEnv varsEffect
--no-colorATMOS_NO_COLOR, NO_COLOR, CLICOLORDisable color output
--force-colorATMOS_FORCE_COLOR, CLICOLOR_FORCEForce color output even when not a TTY (e.g. piped/CI output, screenshots)

atmos theme Commands

Discover and preview themes (a theme controls tables, markdown rendering, and help text colors):

atmos theme list                 # List all available themes
atmos theme list --recommended   # Only themes tested for optimal compatibility
atmos theme show <theme-name>    # Preview a theme's palette and sample UI elements
atmos theme browse               # Interactive/searchable theme gallery (docs site)
atmos list themes                # Alias for 'theme list'; defaults to recommended-only, use --all for all

Activate a theme via ATMOS_THEME=<theme-name> env var or settings.terminal.theme in atmos.yaml.

Routing

NeedLoad
Template settingsatmos-templates
Validation settings and policiesatmos-validation, atmos-schemas
Auth or identity settingsatmos-auth
Native CI settingsatmos-ci
Toolchain settingsatmos-toolchain
Stack/component settings fieldsatmos-stacks, atmos-components

Guardrails

  • Treat env as global process environment. Use component, workflow, command, or auth-specific env settings when only one execution context needs the variable.
  • Do not put subsystem-specific details here just because they live under settings; route to the owning skill first.
  • Prefer explicit, stable global settings over hidden shell assumptions.

Signals

GitHub stars
1k
Forks
175
Last commit
Sep 2026
Advanced
Catalog kind
skill
Gateway key
atmos-settings
Source
github.com/cloudposse/atmos